Lawrence O'Donnell: The Single-Payer Solution
Lawrence O'Donnell started his show off this Wednesday evening by stating the obvious. If we'd gotten single-payer, Medicare for all as a solution to the broken health care system in America instead of the compromise which left employers in the business of providing insurance for their employees, we wouldn't be dealing with this debacle of the Catholic Church fighting the Obama administration on whether they're going to have to cover birth control in their health care plans.
As he noted, employers and the Catholic Church shouldn't be in the business of providing health care and we should not be settling for a system that still leaves millions of Americans uninsured if they lose their jobs and can't afford to pay for the premiums that are sky high when you're out there on your own.
Sadly we're seeing our politicians and a good deal of the media gladly turning this into another culture war and trying to paint the Obama administration as waging some war on religious institutions, instead of it leading to a discussion on exactly what O'Donnell was talking about here and the fact that this debacle is proof of exactly why we should have single-payer and everyone insured at a reasonable cost instead of lining health insurance company CEO's and stockholders pockets.
Why should women in America be put in a position where birth control pills, which have health benefits beyond just preventing pregnancy, and which are a far cheaper to pay for than the cost of a woman becoming pregnant, be subjected to the whims of their employers if those employers happen to be a religious institution? It's wrong. And as O'Donnell said, this is a debate we shouldn't even be having right now, but here we are, still having arguments about birth control and listening to right-wingers try to conflate it with abortion. I feel like I died and landed back in the 1950's listening to this nonsense.
God damn that was a great rant. I love it to death.
Excellent comment by Lawrence. The solution is so simple we need Medicare for all. No high salaries & bonuses for CEO's & shareholders. David Boies was also on his show & gave such a clear, concise argument against the phony & bogus anti- religion attack by Republicans!!!
they thought Obama meant a single-PRAYER solution....
Wall Street is just a parasite on the actual labor and investments of average Americans.
Banks play with futures, debt paper, complex financial instruments, and other peoples incomes.
Sell 'em short & help 'em crash - Tear 'em apart & sell the pieces
Neither employers nor insurance companies should come between healthcare providers and the public.
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
When he's good, he burns it up with the best.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
We also wouldn't need megalomaniacal "charities" providing basic cancer screenings to our fellow human beings.
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Keep it up Lawrence, C&L. With your help, and others, like the occupy movement, we could see single payer yet.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Doesn't that mean he wants Romney to win?
Heheh. No, obviously he doesn't want Willard to win.
But actually, i think he spread the criticism around pretty well - and i agree with everything he said.
He also said this...
You just have to pay attention to the whole of what is said, and what's going on.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Cut out the racketeers ? Cut out the blood sucking middle men / free loaders who are the insurance companies and the insurance company investors on Wall Street ? End a healthcare system that is set up so that useless middlemen who provide no health care / medical services whatsoever can get in on the action and dictate to us what medical care we can get and set the price you'll have to pay ? Of course it should be , but I can't even imagine that ever happening , not in this GD country . America the beautiful is it ? It's a damned cesspool , owned and ran by greedy pigs who can never get or have enough .
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
First we have to wait till 2014 so we can have the privilege of continuing to buy for-profit insurance and paying double the per capita cost of health care of the rest of the civilized world.
Then we have to wait a year or two or three more for Obamacare to prove itself to be the failure at providing quality, affordable health care it was designed to be. Then we can probably count on waiting a few more years as various tweaks are tried and fail.
Then we might be able to get around to the obvious solution that the Affordable Care Act has so successfully delayed.
We've been had.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Compared to single payer it's a bad joke , but Obama care has helped a lot of people , helped one of the bloggers here , I think it was Karoli ( ? ) who recently wrote about it , how it helped her family . Obama barely got what he got , Obama care passed Congress by what ? A couple votes ?Single payer was flat out impossible , the majority in Congress put themselves up for sale , have been bought , they are owned . Congress is the problem , absolutely corrupt .
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
Yep, there is a lot to this whole health insurance story.
Barack Obama's brilliant play on birth control
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Who comes out against birth control in 2012? What brilliant political strategist decides that coming out against something even a majority of Catholics favor is a smart political strategy?
The bad cop is just going out of his way to make the good cop look good - and more importantly: different.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Obama had a health insurance executive write the darn thing. The White House backed the Baucus bill from the start.
They got exactly what they wanted. Obamacare didn't mirror AHIP's own proposal by accident. Bill Clinton even thanked the health insurance lobby for their support of the ACA.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
yeah and guess what , Obama had to make a deal with the Pharmaceutical industry too in order to get what he could . They had and they have the power to stop anything . Why is it so hard to understand it , the power of the Insurance industry , the Pharmaceutical Industry , the lobbyists , that they literally own Congress and that Obama needed Congressional approval to get anything ? The President does not have the power that you think he does , nothing close to it . It's make a deal with the bad guys or you'll get nothing , the bad guys literally own Congress.
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
"Obama barely got what he got , Obama care passed Congress by what ? A couple votes ?Single payer was flat out impossible , the majority in Congress put themselves up for sale , have been bought , they are owned . Congress is the problem , absolutely corrupt ."
Exactly why I wish we would stop calling The Affordable Health Care Act "ObamaCare", as if it's what he was trying to pass. He was f'ed at every turn. And now this crappy, sabotaged bill is credited 100% to him?? Let's pick another name already, if it's not to be referred to as The Affordable Health Care Act. How about The Congressional Obstructionist Health Care Act? Or The Crazy Death Panel Fetal Rights Health Care Act? Others?
. . . what the health insurers themselves, as well as the Koch brothers' financed heritage Foundation proposed?
Obama really "tried" to get something else and it just magically morphed into the industry's favored package? Well, not so coincidentally, really.
It was drafted by a health insurance executive who then moved on to Obama's HHS to oversee the implementation of the insurance industry's plan.
That's an awful lot of coincidence if the final plan were really just the result of obstructionism and compromise. Of course, if it were an industry plan from the outset, it makes perfect sense (with a bit of noise about killing grandma and fascist socialism thrown in for some cover).
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Hmmm...you make some good points fiver, as scary as they might be. Thanks for the link...I'll be looking into this
Maybe single-payer will arrive just in time to pay for my terminal hospital stay as the flying cars zip by my window.
I don't believe in God. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
-Andrew Carnegie
Desolation Row
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
The Catholic Church shouldn't be in the business of any thing other than the shape of their flocks spiritual being, not healthcare, not hospitals, not politics, none of it. If they stray into it, they start paying taxes, heavy, heavy taxes.
Religions still haven't learned their place, they are separate from the government now and forever. If they can not abide by that, bye-bye tax status, very simple.
with you more! Well said DK504.
The US health system is regarded in the rest of the developed world with a combination of astonishment, amusement and horror.
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"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Having lived in the States back in the sixties and seventies and gladly returned to Europe, I have to explain around how there is no "social security" in the US.
Fake leader Nancy Pelosi took the public option out of the debate that crazy woman.
It's funny how political season rolls around again and we are hearing the same old stories so often about birth control, abortion, and gay marriage. Same old tactics. Same old story.
Peace.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
What are you smoking G ? Can you spare some ?
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
Until 2014 when thousands of Americans who are not paying attention get Auto-Enrolled into Medicaid.
Then let's say one of these unsuspecting Americans who is living in the old house Aunt Ginny left them has a bad appendicitis attack and ends up being 911'd to the local E.R. where, "Oops! That damn appendix has BURST! ($$$)!
After the schmuck finally wakes up in ICU (five days later $$$), he then discovers he is a Medicaid patient!
Well, thank freaking' God! Until he gets the notice from Medicaid that his assets are being seized under the "Estate Recovery Clause" in order to cover that $100k hospital adventure.
So many surprises coming. So little time.
Red flags were flying for many of us when Obama killed the public option.
Fireworks should have been exploding when the provision was added that no state can opt out for Single Payer until 2017!
The fix was in at Obama's inauguration.
We are ALL freaking DOOMED.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
The system we have now and 'reform' bill that was passed is a joke.
NOBODY 2012
Lawrence is right on! We have created a maze of a healthcare mess! Dump the insurance companies. They hate the insured and the providers! It's just about making money to them. They would rather that the insured pay in forever and die fast without ever getting any healthcare!
It's nice to know we can still ask for what we didn't get, and don't have to be satisfied with some stupid lecture on how sausage is made.
The businesses that are all for the current system are the ones that share the $130 Billion in tax breaks to offer that insurance.
Lets get rid of that, creating a level playing field, and see where they stand. If they were not protecting their 'turf', maybe we could get some real reform.
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